Religious studies

Introduction

In this part of SAFARI we are going to cover information resources for religious studies. As with any subject it is difficult to describe every resource that may be of use. It will depend on what aspect of religious studies you are interested in.

Information about resources available to Open University students and links to them are found on the 'Online collections by subject' page of the Library website. Specific resources are discussed in more detail below.

Books

There is a large collection of religious studies electronic books available from the 'Online collections by subject' page of the Library website.

There are an increasing number of electronic books and texts available on the internet. These are available on ROUTES: Electronic books and include the Historical Texts Archive.

To find out about other books available in your subject area, you can search library catalogues. These are listed on the Other library catalogues page of the Library website.

There are online reference books (for example, dictionaries and encyclopaedias) listed on the 'Electronic book providers' section of the Library website. The reference database, Oxford Reference Online, provides access to the following reference books:

• A Dictionary of the Bible
• The Oxford Companion to the Bible
• A Dictionary of Buddhism
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

Databases

Databases are useful for finding articles on a topic. They enable you to search across a number of journal titles (and sometimes books and reports) in order to find information in your area of study. There are two main types of databases:

• full text databases contain the complete article in one place;
• bibliographical databases contain references to books and journals held elsewhere. They may also include a short summary or review of the article or book.

Some databases contain a mixture of both full text and bibliographic information. Your starting point when using Library databases should be the 'Online collections by subject' page. Databases of particular interest to you include:

• ATLA Religion (bibliographic and some full-text)
• ATLAS (full-test)
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index (bibliographic)
• British Humanities Index (bibliographic)
• Social Sciences Citation Index (bibliographic)

Journals

An increasing number of journals are available electronically through the Library website. We have selected some for Religious Studies, and these can be found on the 'Online collections by subject' page. This list is only a selection. You are strongly advised to use the A-Z list of journals to browse for other titles.

You can also search several journal titles at once, by subject keyword, using the electronic journal collections

Internet resources

There are many sites on the internet where you will find information on religious studies. Some of the best available are included on ROUTES. The Library and module teams have worked closely to compile a set of resources relevant to religious studies modules at the Open University. You can browse by module code, if you are following an OU module, or by subject or keyword.

Keeping up to date

This subject is covered in more detail in Section 7.

Libraries

SAFARI concentrates on resources that are available to Open University students through the Library website. However, these may not be the only resources available to you. When you need to use a library, you can find out about those located near you by using our Access to Libraries database.

Before visiting a library, you may want to check its catalogue to make sure it holds the books and journals you need. You can find links to library catalogues on the Library website.

There may be other library resources near to you. Does your workplace have a library or information service you can use? Do you belong to a professional organisation or learned society? Many of these have specialist library and information services for their members and they often offer student membership rates.